I fell behind for a while and just finished the game over the last week, so my thoughts for Day 8 onwards follow.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by After a brisk nap
Anyway, the fair is where it all falls apart for me. In a game that is otherwise somewhat lacking in character interaction (I would have liked to meet some of my other 25 or so merry men), here there are suddenly dozens, maybe a hundred people you could possibly interact with. As an obsessive-compulsive adventure gamer, this leaves me no choice other than to try to look, talk to and interact with every person on every screen. Which takes forever and is almost entirely pointless.
|
I felt exactly the same way, that's actually how I first fell behind in the playthrough. I think a lot of the problem is also how static and sparsely animated the scene is and how the quality of the interaction is so uneven. One hotspot might give a reaction that does a great job of enhancing the setting and enriches the experience, while the one next is some asinine anachronism or in-joke, completely defeating the effect of the last hotspot. I'm currently also at an impasse in Conquests of Camelot when you first reach Jersualem and similarly you get a huge sudden opening up of what previously had been a far more enclosed game. For me it's exhausting trying to decide what to do first.
The other thing that stopped me dead for a couple of days were the two changing into a tree parts. They feel very clumsy and it doesn't really seem very elegant game design for the player to have to walk to one of the groves and wander for a few screens until the sheriff's men show up, then go back to the grove. There's more a sense of irritation than tension. Another design decision that struck me as very unfair and irritating was having to
Spoiler:put the fire ring on before even discussing Marian's rescue or be killed. There should have been an opportunity before Robin stupidly launches himself into the flames.
I also don't agree with ATMachine on it being a good thing that the wisp following part covered only one screen. It comes across as pointless and nowhere near fully realised. I would have preferred it to cover a couple of screens and involve some actual challenges to navigate or not be in there at all. That said, I find the Fens atmosphere much more effective this time; there's the eerie mysticism of the wisps, the dank ivy covered back wall of the monastery and actual militant monks seen on the parapets (the atmosphere was good enough that I initially thought there was a stealth puzzle here.) The wonderful music remains and there's also a lot more use of colour here, avoiding the generic dungeon feel.
A hell of a lot that had slipped my mind about the game, both good and bad (mainly the maze, the tree changing puzzle and some of the slightly contrived or repetitive situations), was brought back by this playthrough. I also agree with Ninth that a bit more traditional adventuring wouldn't have gone amiss (though not so much to unbalance the game) and that some characters are incredibly underutilised (the widow's pretty glaring here.) The malleability of the ending also wasn't as great as I had remembered (for instance, ATMachine's observation that the King may accuse you of killing Marian in some situations even when she's standing right there in the court, and at one point I threatened the bartender with my bow, leading him to tell me I'd live to regret it, then bugger off completely for the remainder of the game.)
Still, the game remains a masterpiece, with more significant good things I'd forgotten or didn't know about until now. Tricking the Sheriff as Puck is great, as are all the optional times you can visit the Sheriff or the abbot. A lot of the writing is brilliant, highlights being the comraderie of the merry men and the consequences if Marian dies. Robin's grief is really palpable and accomplished extremely economically. Of course, it peters out quite soon, but is a lot more impressive than I would have expected of what amounts to a "you messed up" path through the game. This playthrough was great (thanks to After a brisk nap for running it and ATMachine's insightful running commentary with minimum and maximum possible scores and the like) and I'm looking forward to the next one.
